The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [113]
My teeth were chattering so hard I cupped my cheeks to quiet them.
“And Alison,” he continued, “liked Seamus. When you asked if they were friends I should have said they were more than friends. She was always following him around, trying to join in our games. I thought they’d be happy together. In ’45, I came back, not covered with glory but free of shame, and Seamus came back, the farm-boy who had dug his way through the war. But he wasn’t bitter; he was hopeful. He started working for my father, and in the holidays, when Alison was home from school, they were inseparable. I was off at university but whenever I wrote to her, I sang Seamus’s praises, and I told my father, without explanation, that I owed him my life.”
I did not look at Mr. Sinclair, I did not need to, but in my mind’s eye he was changing, falling from that pedestal where, heedless of his warnings, I had placed him. “Is Seamus Nell’s father?” I said.
“I wondered that—they were lovers on and off for years—but Alison was blue-eyed, like Seamus. As long as she was riding, she didn’t want to marry him, or anyone. And he seemed happy to work on the farm and act as her groom. After her accident, though, he became a reminder of what she loved and couldn’t have.”
“Did Vicky know?”
Once again his coat rustled. “She knew Seamus was wild about Alison; everyone did. As for the rest, I think she guessed there was something amiss, but Seamus kept his word, until today. After you left he said he couldn’t forgive himself for not taking Alison to the hospital that night. Of course he had no idea it was different from all the other times. Poor Seamus.”
Gazing up at the dark ceiling, I remembered the evening I’d seen him leaning against his mantelpiece, shaking with grief. He too blamed himself for the loss of the person he most loved. “So he warned you yesterday, didn’t he?” I said. “That was what he was telling you at the hay barn.”
“I thought it was just drunken ranting. That he’d sleep it off and we’d be on the plane to Edinburgh by the time he woke up. I was an idiot.”
I knew he was asking for forgiveness, but I was too busy redrawing my map of the last few months, marking the new shoreline. “Have you ever told anyone else about you and Seamus?”
“You’re determined, aren’t you, to get to the bottom of my box. I told Caroline, the woman I was engaged to.”
“And she broke it off?”
“No.” He gave a bitter laugh. “She could hardly wait for me to finish the story, to get back to talking about her wedding dress and where to have the reception. I was the one who couldn’t stand it.”
“So why didn’t you tell me? You promised you wouldn’t lie to me, but all you’ve done is tell me lies.”
“Gemma, Gemma, you have everything back to front. It’s because I admire you—your honesty, your boldness—that I couldn’t bear to tell you. I did try to let you know that there were things in my past I wasn’t proud of, but it was more than twenty years ago. I am still the same person who carried you over the causeway, who loves you, who wants to marry you. You swore nothing would change your feelings.”
Mr. Sinclair kept talking, apologising, explaining. I stared down the passageway to where the rain fell on the grass.
“I’m freezing,” I said.
At once he was standing over me, his hand outstretched. It was his hand I had seen first, before his face, as he struggled to change the tyre, and now, in the dim light, I saw his pale palm reaching towards me. I had only to put my hand there, surrender myself to his warm grasp, and everything would follow—a home, a family, university—but for how long? I recalled how easily my aunt had demoted